Here are a few gripes about really stupid things.
I’m back to Android (the new LG built Nexus 5X) and much happier than with my iPhone. But why (oh why) when you press and hold the ‘on/off’ switch and the ‘power off’ option appears, does it appear as the only option? Why don’t they, like Samsung does, have a list of options including ‘restart’ so you don’t have to wait for the thing to power down and then press and hold the button again. Would that be so hard? Why (oh why) can’t you set the phone to ‘Power Save’ by default rather than do so manually every time you charge it? I realise these are complicated beasts these smartphones and I should be grateful. I am. But both of these bugs have been in Google’s distribution of Android for many iterations. Repeating obvious design flaws used to be a Microsoft speciality. Word is 30 years old, but images and boxes still float about as if they were blobs of water televised from the space shuttle.
But otherwise it’s a damn good phone, even if it’s unclear to me what a Great Leap Forward Android OS 6.0 “Marshmallow” is. It’s just like my old LG built Nexus 5
In the settings you might be able to turn fastboot off, or in developer settings, if you turn them on, tapping build number 6 times, one might be able to adjust the power button menu. I don’t know LG though.
Given the company Google is, it’s curious how user unfriendly some of their products are. For example, the web page for Gmail is pretty average, dropbox is vastly better than google drive (despite them both being more or less the same thing) and whoever changed the option on Google maps so it keeps on realigning itself when you turn your phone around (forcing a mental rotation of a map), I assume didn’t bother actually testing how annoying it is before implementing it.
You could be daring and root your phone.
And I mean that in the nicest possible way. :)
?
“Root” means something different in Unix (from which Android is derived) – google it. Only if not done carefully you can metaphorically root your phone in the Australian sense.
Think I will not try it at home.
On the wider topic, I agree with Nick – its not obvious design mistakes per se that annoy me so much, it’s the bloodyminded insistence some companies have in persisting with them. It indicates an amazing indifference to their customers, which in turn indicates that they can afford to because they are monopolists (hence Microsoft’s inglorious record in its heyday in this regard).
One thing you learn in IT is how often the same patterns are repeated. Often you build on what you’ve done in the post but with a different front end (ux) or you don’t get around to changing something because it’s hard, or low priority or you run out of time.
Have you tried holding the power button for 10+ seconds to reboot?
Not sure why stock android only has power off in that menu, but you’d need root , as Steve says, to change the menu.
Worked like a charm. Thanks for that!
I’m mildly disappointed that there is little scope now for further Benny Hill-ish punning based on “rooting” phones and tablets…